My husband and I are both free-lance employees without access to a 401K for retirement funding. We max out our IRA contributions annually but a paltry $5,000/year is not anywhere near what we need to stash away.

Does anyone have any ideas for other tax-deferred retirement vehicles? Or, any suggestions for other ways to build our nest egg? We have 25 years until we retire.

Well, I would simply buy and sell stocks or mutual funds in a regular brokerage account. While you would like to take any gains as long-term, remember that there are many people who have seen a short-term gain go to a long-term loss, just because they were trying to minimize taxes.

Beware of municipal bonds. While tax free, they can be quite risky. Google "municipal bankruptcy" and you will see that. In addition, even if they are safe you have to watch out for a rise in interest rates by the Fed, which will probably cause the value of the bonds to go down.

My husband and I are both free-lance employees without access to a 401K for retirement funding. We max out our IRA contributions annually but a paltry $5,000/year is not anywhere near what we need to stash away.

Does anyone have any ideas for other tax-deferred retirement vehicles?

You could each open a 'Single 401(k)' or 'Solo 401(k)'. Many brokerages and mutual fund companies offer these accounts.

As an 'employee', $17k ($22.5k if 50 or older) can be contributed to either Roth or Traditional (pre-tax) option, just like the employee of a company that offers a 401(k) with these options. As an 'employer' you can contribute up to 25% of your net profit for the year, with the caveat that the employer and employee contributions may not total more than $50k ($55.5k if 50 or older). Also, employer contributions must be Traditional (pre-tax) contributions.

If you form your own "company" and run your freelance work through the company you are eligible to create a individual 401k (free through TD Ameritrade and probably others) and put away up to $15K (more if your older) plus a percentage of your profits. Must be willing to manage it yourself but you can buy many investments through the brokerage house.

We get paid via W2 but we're not considered staff and aren't available for any benefits

Then you are not eligible for the solo 401k or other retirement plans mentioned up-thread.

The only tax-deferred option is an IRA - Roth or traditional depending on your income and preferences.

You can also achieve some tax deferral by planning to hold any stock or mutual fund purchases for many years. Until you sell, there's no tax on the increase in value. And if tax laws stay the same as they are now (which is a really big IF), those gains are taxed at a lower rate.

There's nothing preventing you from saving for retirement in ordinary accounts.

If you form your own "company" and run your freelance work through the company

You can't just form a "company". To get away from the W2 treatment by their current employers, they would need to form a corporation, or an LLC and elect to be taxed as a corporation.

Then their current employers would need to agree to pay their corporation for the services of the corporation's employees (our OP). And that is definitely NOT a slam dunk.

Finally, they'd have to be employees of the corporation and handle all of the associated payroll taxes and reporting. And prepare tax returns for the corporation as well as their personal returns. All of which likely entail the services of a tax professional. They may well be preparing their own returns now, but the additional complexities of this structure come with additional costs.

But if that can be made to work and the costs to do it aren't excessive, then their corporation could put a retirement plan in place. My guess is that a SEP or a 401k plan would be the most likely choices.

My advice to someone with 25 years until retirement would be to start building a dividend income stream that will pay as close to 100% of retirement expenses as possible. I didn't start this process until age 57. When I was younger, I was busy swinging for the big capital gains fences. Big mistake!

I have a woman coworker who is my age with one son and is a single parent. We started working at our employer the same year. She has stage 4 ovarian cancer.

After seeing what you went through, what she is going through and losing my father last year, I am evaluating how much I spend and do today and how much I save for tomorrow. One of the reasons I just spent two weeks in Hawaii was these events. At the same time, relatives of mine have lived into their 90s and 100s.

So my comment was directed at myself. I wish I had the perfect crystal ball to know how my life turns out so I could know how to adjust my savings and spending.

Do you file a schedule C each year? If you do and you do not receive a W2 from an employer, and you don't have any employees that work for you over 1000 hours per year, you and your spouse my set up a solo-401(k). The above link is general in its description of how a solo-401(k) plan is set up, as there are more details in how maximum contribution amounts are calculated, start up costs, annual required reporting after the account value reaches $250,000, and so forth.

For a more detailed description of a SEP or SIMPLE IRA, take a look at IRS Publication 560, at